Tuesday, February 05, 2013

WiFi and neighbors

Do you ever just think, "I wish s/he lived somewhere else?"

I'm at home listening to The Diane Rehm Show discussion on WiFi and I feel that a huge mistake has been made in the discussion. So I grab the phone to call in. Yeah, that's how ticked off I was, I was actually going to call in. The man representing big business was not being honest about facts. So I'm on the phone and waiting and waiting -- I'm not even up to the screener.

And knock-knock-knock. It's this woman named Sofia. She doesn't believe in computers so I'm not worried about naming her or speaking my mind. A couple got a divorce (after 20 years of marriage) and she's related to one of them and is in the house until they can sell it (it's been for sale for almost six months now). So she has a hundred and one questions. Including whether my son who lives at home (with his daughter) is gay?

I said, "Excuse me?"

I don't know her like that.

She said, "Oh, well, I see him all the time and I never see him with a woman so I thought he was gay."

Why was it even your business?

There's nothing wrong with being gay. I'd be thrilled to have a gay child. But this idea that this 66-year-old woman is watching my son and musing on whether he's gay? I should add that in the six months, we've spoken twice. Once when she moved in and I did make a welcome to the neighborhood package. The next time was when she was banging on my door one Sunday morning at 5:20. My husband answers and I'm right behind him. What's going on? Our dog is making too much noise.

Okay, she lives five houses down, first off. Second off, we don't have a dog. My kids had dogs growing up. My granddaughter might get one if she wants one. But we haven't had a dog for two years now. If I was banging on someone's door before six in the morning on a Sunday, I think I'd make sure I was at the right door. She did not leave. Even after we told her we had no dog, she would not leave. It was 6:30 before we got away from the door -- an hour and ten minutes after she knocked.

She is apparently a lonely woman because she has taken to stopping people as they get out of their cars. (I now park in the garage and close the door before I get out of the car in order to avoid her.) And she will do nothing but gripe and gripe and you will try to get away with little luck. My husband has even told her, "I don't have the time and I'm not interested in what you're saying." She followed him to the front door, still talking, the evening he told her that.

So I'm on the phone to The Diane Rehm Show and there's the knock-knock-knock. So I go to the door distracted and open it before checking to see who it is.

It's Sofia.

I hung up the phone and said, "What do you need?"

And for forty minutes she will not leave. During that time, she asks me if she can borrow a hundred bucks. This is our third encounter. You may be thinking, "Something was delivered and she's short." Nope. She's been seeing some ad for a cream on TV and it's a hundred bucks and she doesn't have it. So if I will loan it to her, she will pay me five dollars in March, five dollars in April, five dollars in May . . .

As the hour went off (first hour of The Diane Rehm Show), I told her, "You've been here for forty minutes. I don't have time to waste. I'm home because I have things to take care of. Please do not knock on my door again unless you have a medical emergency."

She wanted to keep talking. I opened the door, pointed and said, "Out, now."

I am not a rude person and I like my neighbors, even my cranky ones. But I can't stand Sofia.

Scott Cleland was the guest I found less than honest.

I'm not sure what I was planning to call in on now as I read over the transcript (here for show with options). I believe it's his whining about all the money the companies have put in developing the infrastructure. Diane points out that they have made a tidy profit. He says that's capitalism and that's market value.

But you know what else had market value? The digital spectrum. And they got it for free from the federal government. They should have paid billions for that.

The point of the hour was that the FCC has recommended free WiFi hot spots around the country.

Here's the way Diane's staff described it:Access to the Internet has grown from just 10 million people in the early '90s to more than 2.5 billion today. But a third of households in the U.S. still don’t have high speed internet access because they can’t afford it. To address the growing “digital divide,” the federal government is proposing the creation of a free, public wireless network nationwide. But the plan faces opposition from telecom companies who say valuable spectrum should be sold at auction and not given away for free. And they warn that unlicensed airwaves could interfere with existing broadcasts. Diane and a panel of experts discuss the pros and cons of free Wi-Fi.

It was a really interesting topic and seemed like a good discussion (it reads like one). I would've enjoyed listening to the entire thing. But for a neighbor . . .

Tuesday, February 5, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, French
journalist Nadir Dendoune appears before a Baghdad court, more suicide
bombs in Iraq (and look what's being targeted), it's the tenth
anniversary of War Criminal Colin Powell's dishonest presentation to the
United Nations, and more.

We've got two things to add quickly to the snapshot so let's do it at the top. Danny Schechter reports Media Channel
is back up and running. Good for them and may they be the brave site
they were back in the day when they refused to march to the drumbeat of
war and regularly held the government accountable. Disturbing news
comes from the office of Senator Patty Murray:

Murray Criticizes
VA and DoD Decision to “Back Away” from Truly Seamless Medical Health Record
System

(Washington D.C.) -- U.S. Senator Patty
Murray today released the following statement after the VA and DoD jointly
announced changes to their plan to pursue a fully integrated electronic medical
record system.

“I’m disappointed that the VA and the
Pentagon are now backing away from a truly seamless medical records system.
While this is a very complex problem, we must provide the best care for our
servicemembers and veterans. That means the departments must meet this
challenge by working together. What they are now proposing is not the fully
integrated, end-to-end IT solution that this problem demands. VA and DOD have
been at this for years and have sunk over $1 billion into making this the
cornerstone of a nationwide electronic medical records initiative. I intend to
follow-up with both Secretaries to find out why this decision was
made.”

That
is outrageous. We will address that change in policy tomorrow.
Senator Murray knows full well how much time has been spent on this and
all the excuses VA and DoD have given. For DoD and VA to now announce
that they are changing course is not just wasteful of taxpayer money,
it's shirking their responsibility. This is shameful.

Press TV: And how important was
the principle of ‘starting a war of aggression’ as we talked about
earlier, or ‘crimes against peace’ in proceedings at Nuremburg that led
to the hanging of many leading Nazis?
Can the International Criminal Court prosecute these crimes?

Chomsky: Yes, it was a major factor in hanging of Nazi war
criminals; in fact, if you look closely, it’s even more pertinent to the
present. So, [Joachim] von Ribbentrop, [German] Foreign Minister, one
of the charges against him was that he supported a preemptive war
against Norway. The Nazis knew that the British were thinking of
invading from Norway, so they preempted it and established a quisling
government there. That was one of the crimes against von Ribbentrop.
How about Colin Powel? He justified a preemptive war against no threat. So if von Ribbentrop was hanged, OK!...
So could the International Criminal Court do something like that? Only if it wanted to be immediately destroyed.

As much criticism as Powell has gotten for this -- he calls it "painful" and says,
"I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying" -- it hasn't been close to
what he deserves. That's because there's no question that Powell was consciously lying: he fabricated "evidence" and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false.We know this because of some good reporting and what's seeped into
the public record via one of the congressional investigations of pre-war
Iraq intelligence. The record is still incomplete, because Congress
never bothered to look at how Powell used the intelligence he received,
and the corporate media has never taken a close look at what happened.
But with what's available we can go through Powell's presentation line
by line to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew and what he told
the world. As you'll see, there's quite a lot to say about it.

Ten years
later -- with Powell’s speech a historic testament of shameless
deception leading to vast carnage -- we may not remember the extent of
the fervent accolades. At the time, fawning praise was profuse across
the USA’s mainline media spectrum, including the nation’s reputedly
great newspapers.The New York Times
editorialized that Powell “was all the more convincing because he
dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good and evil
and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against Mr. Hussein’s
regime.” The Washington Post was more war-crazed, headlining
its editorial “Irrefutable” and declaring that after Powell’s U.N.
presentation “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq
possesses weapons of mass destruction.”Yet basic
flaws in Powell’s U.N. speech were abundant. Slanted translations of
phone intercepts rendered them sinister. Interpretations of unclear
surveillance photos stretched to concoct the worst. Summaries of
cherry-picked intelligence detoured around evidence that Iraq no longer
had WMDs. Ballyhooed documents about an Iraqi quest for uranium were
forgeries.

Powell managed to say with a straight face, "We wrote 1441 not in
order to go to war. We wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace." Such
rhetoric aside, the U.N. gambit was always a set up. And now Powell is
playing his dutiful, shameless part in the denouement.Any decision by the United States to go to war must take into consideration the possible negative consequences of such action.These consequences are grave.Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Iraqi civilians may die;
hundreds of thousands may be injured; millions may be rendered homeless
or exposed to disease or starvation.The U.S. attack might prompt a chemical or biological attack on U.S. soldiers, which could expose them to horrific suffering.And Bush's war could lead to increased terrorism against the United
States. Already, the FBI and homeland security officials are on
heightened alert, fearing that the onset of war may trigger attacks on
our own soil by Al Qaeda or Iraqi agents.Colin Powell didn't mention these exorbitant costs of war. All he
said, essentially, was suck it up: "We must not shrink from whatever is
ahead of us."

Phyllis Bennis also called out the nonsense in real time. And, in real time, Linda Heard noted the reality Powell ignored, "What Powell failed to mention was the horrendous human
tragedy that would be suffered by the Iraqi people if he gets his wish.
Aid agencies envisage over half-a-million displaced persons, as well as
food shortages and high civilian death tolls." Powell's a War Criminal. Back in June, Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin summed up Powell's 'career,' "What you might have missed is that Powell is a war criminal in his own
right, one who in more than four decades of 'public service' helped kill
people from Vietnam to Panama to Iraq who never posed a threat to
America. But don’t just take some anti-war activists’ word for it:
Powell will proudly tell you as much, so long as he can make a buck from
doing it in a book."

Disturbing news of Iraq comes via Serkan Demirtas (Hurriyet Daily News) who reports:Turkey and Iraq have no choice but to pursue strong ties if they want to
optimize the use of Iraq’s resources and export them via Turkey, a top
U.S. envoy has said, warning both that failure to do so “could lead to a
more violent conflict and disintegration within Iraq.”

“If
Turkey and Iraq fail to optimize their economic ties, the failure could
be worse than that. There could be a more violent conflict in Iraq and
[the chances of] disintegration within Iraq could be [strengthened],”
Francis Ricciardone, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, told Ankara
bureau chiefs yesterday. “Economic success can hold Iraq together.
Failure could support those forces’ attempt to disintegrate. And that
would not be good for Turkey, for the U.S. or anybody in the region, I
believe.”

Disturbing? Ten years later and US officials still
make it all about oil. As Demitras notes, this is being interpreted as
a call for the government of Turkey to toe Baghdad's line re: oil
exports and to cease or decrease business with the Kurdistan Regional
Government. Now that does against free markets and democracy, so
someone might want to ask Barack to explain that. More importantly, the
ongoing, decades long war between the Turkish government and the PKK
has had more talks and more efforts in the time since the Turkish
government and the KRG have begun making serious business plans than in
the three decades prior (80s, 90s. 00s). So realize that the US
government is calling for that to be gutted too -- as it yet again
sticks its big, ugly nose into matters that don't concern them. It is
curious, isn't it, how the Barack Obama remained silent as Iraq's LGBTs
were openly slaughtered on the streets of Baghdad, how they were
targeted by Nouri al-Maliki's Ministry of the Interior (which he heads)
just last year, how when that Ministry denied involvement, the leaflets
they handed out at schools calling for the deaths of LGBTs and Emos
surfaced. But Barack Obama didn't say one damn word as Iraqi youth
lived in fear, as they were terrorized. But when corporate America puts
a twenty in his g-string, watch Barack do that lap dance.

For the third day in a row, Iraq sees a suicide bombing aimed at security forces. Sunday, the attack was on police in Kirkuk. Monday, the attack was on Sahwa in Taji. Today? Kareem Raheem (Reuters) explains it's Taji again but the Iraqi military was the focus as a suicide car bomber went after a military checkpoint. AFP reports 6 people were killed, three of which were soldiers. All Iraq News notes that sixteen people were also injured (ten of those are soldiers).

Let's
pretend for a moment it's al Qaeda. The US war created al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia (al Qaeda had no Iraq presence prior to the start of the
Iraq War). So it will be ten years old shortly. So for ten years,
Iraqi and US forces have been fighting it. US troops remain in Iraq for
counter-terrorism operations. They never left. And last fall they
were beefed up. Tim Arango (New York Times) reported
at the end of September, "At the request of the Iraqi government,
according to [US] General [Robert] Caslen [Chief of the Office of
Security Cooperation - Iraq], a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers
was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help
with intelligence." So nearly ten years and what do they have to show
for it? Not a damn thing.

Staying with violence, as noted in the October 15th snapshot, Iraq had already executed 119 people in 2012. Time to add more to that total. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reported
last night that 10 more people were executed on Sunday ("nine Iraqis
and one Egyptian"). Tawfeeq notes the Ministry of Justice's statement
on the executions includes, "The Iraqi Justice Ministry carried out the
executions by hanging 10 inmates after it was approved by the
presidential council." And, not noted in the report, that number's only
going to climb. A number of Saudi prisoners have been moved into
Baghdad over the last weeks in anticipation of the prisoners being
executed. Hou Qiang (Xinhua) observes, "Increasing
executions in Iraq sparked calls by the UN mission in the country, the
European Union and human rights groups on Baghdad to abolish the capital
punishment, criticizing the lack of transparency in the proceedings of
the country's courts."

Does 129 seem like a lot
of people? It is a lot of people. And it appears that 2013 may top
that figure. Already, in the second month of the year, the 100 mark
looms. Dropping back to the February 1st snapshot:

AFP reported
yesterday that already this year Iraq has executed 91 people -- yes,
we're still at the start of 2013 -- 88 men and 3 women. The United
Nations Secretary-General has personally called on Iraq to put in place a
moratorium on executions but Nouri al-Maliki has rejected that. Iraq's
recent prison breaks have often been tied to executions. Most press
outlets (non-Iraqi) simply report that some death row prisoners escaped.
But often, the escape follows the news that prisoners will be moved to
Baghdad (to be executed).

91 executions and the year is
just starting. Sunnis feel they are the ones being executed. Nouri
al-Maliki's refusal to honor United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon's call for a moratorium on executions is seen as an attempt by
Nouri to kill off as many Sunnis as possible.

How are so many
people in Iraqi prisons to begin with? Mass arrests which take place
every day. 'Terrorists' are arrested under Article IV. Article IV, you
may remember, has been at the heart of the current and ongoing protests
in Iraq. They want Article IV tossed. Article IV allows the Iraqi
government to do what the US military did in the early years of the war,
arrest innocent people -- known to be innocent but known to be related
to someone they want to arrest. So a mother, a daughter, a son, a
grandfather, a spouse, anyone related to a suspect is arrested as a
'terrorist.' These people then disappear into the 'justice' system.
From the January 14th snapshot:

First for the wave of Happy Talk. Adam Schreck Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) report
that some 'prisoners' were 'freed' today with some ("dozens') at a
ceremony presided over by "one of the prime minister's most trusted
political allies" Deputy Prime Minister Hussain al-Shahristani who
distributed candy and Korans. Having a hard time seeing Nouri okaying
candy for Sunnis? You're not alone. Though they're trying to spin this
as prisoners being released to meet the protesters demands, they won't
give details about the prisoners (including whether they are Sunni or
not). Schreck notes that some of those 'freed' had already completed
their sentences. That's really not 'freed,' that's sentence was
completed and they were released. Suadad al-Salhy, Patrick Markey and Angus MacSwan (Reuters) also note the 'release' aspect, "Officials
said a ministerial committee had freed 335 detainees whose jail terms
had ended or whose cases had been dismissed for lack of evidence." In other words, people who should have never been held got released. And how many are women?

The western outlets -- except for AFP
-- have ignored that aspect. Women are said to have been raped and
tortured in the prisons. The protesters have demanded the women
prisoners be released, it's not a minor point. The Arabic press grasps
that. Alsumaria leads
with the claim that 335 prisoners have been released over the last days
and only four of these were women. Four. Alsumaria notes the mass
demonstrations that have been taking place and that the demands have
included demands about women prisoners.

Eventually, the
laughable Hussain al-Shahristani would claim 3,000 had been freed.
Cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr would point to the releases
as proof that innocent people are being held in Iraqi prisons and jails
and needed to be released immediately. The four women? They would
disappear. And when the Iraqi press noted that the four women had not
gone home to their families (so who paid the 'bail' Nouri demanded?)
and that there were questions about the women's release, there would be
no more talk of women prisoners being released.

Most recently, in November, federal police invaded 11 homes in the
town of al-Tajji, north of Baghdad, and detained 41 people, including 29
children, overnight in their homes. Sources close to the detainees, who
requested anonymity, said police took 12 women and girls ages 11 to 60
to 6thBrigade headquarters and held them there for four days
without charge. The sources said the police beat the women and tortured
them with electric shocks and plastic bags placed over their heads
until they began to suffocate.Despite widespread outcry over abuse and rape of women in pre-trial
detention, the government has not investigated or held the abusers
accountable. In response to mass protests over the treatment of female
detainees, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a pardon for 11
detainees. However, hundreds more women remain in detention, many of
whom allege they have been tortured and have not had access to a proper
defense.

Getting why prisons are an issue? Getting why
prison breaks might happen? And note the mass arrest took place
where? That's right Taji. Same place, for the last two days, there
have been two attempts at breaking into a prison.

Now the useless
and stupid can continue to do Nouri proud and squawk "al Qaeda in Iraq,
al Qaeda in Iraq," but thinking people should have long ago grasped
that the problem is Nouri al-Maliki who orders these mass arrests. The
problem is Nouri al-Maliki whose State of Law continues to block an
amnesty law in Parliament. The problem is the nonsense being treated as
fact. Back to Morning Edition today:JANE ARRAF: Now, the Iraqi government, when you talk to them, blames the increase
in the tax on other countries, on Ba'athists. When you talk to people
like the governor of Kirkuk, for instance, they blame it on Baghdad.
They say there's no coordination left between intelligence services or
the Iraqi army or any of the police forces that are trying to fight
organizations like al-Qaida. So they say that those increases
in the tax are a direct result of the fact that there is political
turmoil and there's a lot of tension here between Baghdad and pretty
much every other province in the country.

MONTAGNE: And just a
moment ago, when you say Ba'athists, that of course was the party of
Saddam Hussein, mostly secular party, and those Ba'athists would be,
what, sympathizers of his?

ARAFF: If we're
talking about
Ba'athists in the way that the Iraqi government talks about them,
Ba'athist is a very wide term, and that's part of the big problem here.
The Ba'athists, the hardcore Ba'athists, that the government refers to
are actually loyalists to the executed dictator, Saddam Hussein, but
it's become more than that. And al-Qaida also has become more than
that. They've launched alliances with other groups that surprise a lot
of people.

Seriously?

Toby Dodge's new book is Iraq: From War To A New Authoritarianism.
In it, he takes on -- at length -- some of the nonsense about
'Ba'athists' -- he takes it on, he doesn't repeat Nouri's psychotic
claims as fact. Excerpt.

Sectarian rhetoricism, far from
being treated, has become entrenched. As detailed in Chapter Five,
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has from at least 2010 onwards,
repeatedly evoked the 'Ba'athist threat' as a key part of his political
strategy to unite the Shia electorate behind his continued rule. The
idea that the Ba'ath Party, universally discredited after 35 years of
brutal and corrupt rule, purged from government in 2003 and persecuted
by the security services ever since, could pose any sustained threat to
Iraq is simply ludicrous. In evoking the 'hidden hand of Ba'athist
conspiracy', Maliki is deploying a coded sectarian message. He is
seeking to widen the guilt for the abuses commited in the party's name
to the whole of the Sunni section of society, using blame by
association, for the myriad ills and abuses of past and present Iraq.
With the prime minister so frequently reverting to a sectarian message,
it is clear this test has also not been met, and there is little hope in
the near future that Iraqi politics will move beyond the communalist
rhetoric that justified its civil war.

As we noted this morning, Nadir
Dendoune, who holds dual Algerian and Australian citizenship was
covering Iraq for the fabled French newspaper Le Monde's monthly
magazine. His assignment was to document Iraq 10 years after the start
of the Iraq War. Alsumaria explains
the journalist was grabbed by authorities in Baghdad last week for the
'crime' of taking pictures. (Nouri has imposed a required permit,
issued by his government, to 'report' in Iraq.) All Iraq News adds the journalist has been imprisoned for over a week now without charges.

Alsumaria reported
Sunday that the Association for the Defence of Press Freedom was
demanding Nadir's release and stating that his arrest exceeds the law
and is unconstitutional. Al Mada adds that Australia's Foreign Ministry has expressed concern via Australia's Embassy in Baghdad. AFP quotes
Muayad al-Lami who heads the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate stating that
he was questioned by the police on Sunday "and today [Monday] he should be
presented before a judge. Hopefully he will be released this week." He didn't appear before a judge Monday as planned. AFP reported that the appearance has been postponed. Today he appeared before the court.

Alsumaria notes
that a representative from the French Embassy in Baghdad was present
for the thirty minute court appearance. The judge in the case declared
that Nadir would continue to remain imprisoned. AP has a very bad write-up here and here.

Today Iraq's Parliament convened. Alsumaria notes
that the federal budget was among topics discussed by the 250 MPs
present. Another issue was Nouri's crony Jassim Mohammed Jaafar who is
the Minister of Youth and Sports -- a post around which rumors of
corruption and theft of public money swirl. The Parliament had
attemtped to question him last month; however, he failed to show up. So,
January 14th, they 'questioned' him in absentia. Mohammad Sabah (Al Mada) observes
that the mood going into the session was that Parliament would vote to
withdraw confidence in Jaafar which would strip him of his Cabinet
post. Alsumaria notes
State of Law MP Abbas al-Bayati is gloating that the vote failed and
that only 102 of those present voted to dismiss. (This Alsumaria
article quotes him stating 255 were present -- in quotes. Alsumaria, as
noted earlier, reports only 250 were present. Five more may have
showed up or al-Bayati may have his count wrong. All Iraq News also reports only 250 were present.) The Iraq Times notes that 163 votes were needed to dismiss Jaafar.

Iraqiya refused to vote on the federal budget. They announced ahead of time they would not vote for it. Kitabat reports
Iraqiya spokesperson Maysoun al-Damlouji explained that they feel too
much money is allocated for the Cabinet and that they strongly object to
the $2.5 million a day Nouri wants allocated for his office alone.
al-Damloujis explains that Iraqiya's position is that this money would
be better spent on infrastructure repairs, on schools and providing
basic services to the people. The Iraq Times has a strong article charting Nouri's attacks on the press. Time and space permitting, we'll cover that topic in the snapshot today. All Iraq News notes
10 deaths related to H1N1 -- Avian or Bird Flu -- despite, the Ministry
of Health insisted, providing all the necessary medicines to treat it. Hou Qiang covers the deaths for Xinhua.

Turning to the United States, for three things quickly. First
Senator Patrick Leahy's bill on security for US diplomatic posts passed
the Senate last night as his office notes:

February 5, 2013WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate Monday night approved
legislation authored by Senator Patrick Leahy to transfer surplus funds
for Iraq to U.S. embassy security needs in several locations that have
been identified in the post-Benghazi review. Leahy’s bipartisan bill would authorize the State Department to
transfer to embassy security purposes up to $1.1 billion in previously
appropriated funds that are no longer needed in Iraq because of reduced
operations there. Leahy chairs the Appropriations Committee’s
Subcommittee on State Department and Foreign Operations. Cosponsors of
the bill include Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski
(D-Md.); Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member of the State
and Foreign Operations Subcommittee; Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.),
chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Jeanne Shaheen
(D-N.H.); Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.); and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-R.I.). The bill is based on the Leahy Amendment that the Senate approved in
December during debate on the Supplemental Appropriations Bill for Sandy
and other purposes. House Republican leaders dropped the Leahy
provision in the House’s version of the bill.Leahy said, “Hardening our embassy security is something that
everyone agrees is needed. We all want to do what we can to prevent
another tragedy like what occurred in Benghazi. The State Department
has done a review, and these funds will be used to expedite construction
of Marine security guard posts at overseas facilities, and to build
secure embassies.”Leahy continued, “There already has been unnecessary delay in
Congress that has prevented getting this work underway. I hope the
House will give this serious and prompt attention so these security
improvements can begin.”

# # # # #

Press ContactDavid Carle: 202-224-3693

Second, Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Her office issued the following yesterday:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMonday, February 4th, 2012CONTACT: Murray Press Office202-224-2834Senator Murray's Statement on the Completion of Army-Wide PTSD Review(Washington, D.C.) -- Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray released the
following statement after Secretary of the Army John McHugh announced
that the Army had completed a review of behavioral health diagnoses
going back to 2001. Murray pushed for the review after hundreds of of
service members at Joint Base Lewis-McChord had their PTSD diagnoses
taken away then, in many cases, restored over the past two years.
Secretary McHugh made the announcement at a media availability at Joint
Base Lewis-McChord."While I'm pleased that the Army has announced they have completed
this study, it's far more important that they take quick action to
remedy the problem. The Pentagon should also follow through on their
commitment to extend this review to all branches of the military so
servicemembers aren't slipping through the cracks. In the coming weeks,
I will be meeting with Secretary McHugh to get the specific
recommendations that came out of the study.""We cannot ever have a repeat of what happened at JBLM. We cannot
allow those who have served or their loved ones to be dragged through a
system that leaves them with more questions than answers. We must
provide a uniform approach to dealing with the lasting mental wounds of
war if we are going to help stem the tide of military suicide and ensure
that we are easing the transition home for those who serve."###

Michael Isikoff at NBC News has obtained a
Justice Department white paper that purports to explain when it would
be lawful for the government to carry out the extrajudicial killing of
an American citizen believed to be affiliated with a terrorist
organization. Many of the white paper's arguments are familiar because
Attorney General Eric Holder set them out in a speech at Northwestern University in
March of last year. But the white paper offers more detail, and in
doing so it manages to underscore both the recklessness of the
government's central claim and the deficiencies in the government's
defense of it.The 16-page white paper (read it here)
is said to summarize a 50-odd page legal memo written in 2010 by the
Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to justify the addition of
U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi to the government's "kill lists." That
legal memo is one of the documents the ACLU is seeking in an ongoing
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it's a pretty remarkable document.The paper's basic contention is that the government has the authority
to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen if "an
informed, high-level official" deems him to present a "continuing"
threat to the country. This sweeping authority is said to exist even if
the threat presented isn't imminent in any ordinary sense of that word,
even if the target has never been charged with a crime or informed of
the allegations against him, and even if the target is not located
anywhere near an actual battlefield. The white paper purports to
recognize some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are
so vague and elastic that they will be easily manipulated.